


The End of the Beginning

by paperwar



Category: Major (Anime)
Genre: Asian Character, Baseball, Chromatic Character, Chromatic Source, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-12
Updated: 2010-12-12
Packaged: 2017-10-13 15:36:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/138892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperwar/pseuds/paperwar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a long way to the World Series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The End of the Beginning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kantayra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kantayra/gifts).



> Many thanks to my betas, lovepeaceohana and Phredd, whose insights were very helpful!

Toshi threw the ball back to Goro, hard. Harder than necessary: it was just a warmup. Goro shrugged -- maybe Toshi was having an off day -- then threw another pitch.

Goro had been relishing this opportunity to show Toshi just how much he had improved since the World Cup. During the past four years they'd never met on the field; after paying his dues in the minors, Toshi went to the Los Angeles Panthers. He'd just been traded to the Hornets. This was their second day reunited as a battery.

Goro was giving Toshi some excellent pitches. Really sharp.

"That was a ball," Toshi snapped. Goro stared. He was sure it had been in the strike zone. On the edge, sure, but in the zone. He caught the ball Toshi hurled at him and pitched again.

"Ball." Toshi's voice was flat.

"What? No way that was a ball! Are you an idiot?"

Toshi shook his head. "I'm not going to go easy on you," he said. "Those were balls."

Practice deteriorated from there. Goro didn't understand. Yesterday Goro had thrown the same pitches, to the same place, without Toshi calling all of them balls.

Afterwards, Toshi stalked off to shower. Goro, perplexed, looked around for someone who might be able to explain. His gaze landed on Sanders, taking off his mask and preparing to leave.

"What? Don't ask me. Wasn't he your best friend as a kid? Shouldn’t you know? I didn't notice anything," Sanders shrugged. When pressed about whether or not Goro's pitches were balls, he twitched his mustache and said he hadn't been watching. "I had my own pitcher to warm up, you know. But," he allowed, "you're not one to pitch balls when you don't mean to, especially not during practice." He narrowed his eyes. "Did you hurt your arm again?"

"No!" Goro shouted, stamping away.

"Well, he's certainly acting normal, at least," Sanders muttered.

In the locker room, Goro approached Toshi, who avoided looking at him. "What's your problem? You’re not nervous, are you? It’s not like this is your first major league team," Goro said. "Or are you intimidated by catching my pitches?" He leaned in and grinned. "I've gotten even better, you have to admit!"

A couple of their teammates snickered. "That's Shigeno for you. Always thinks he's the best," Roy laughed. "But when he first got over here, he got shut down pretty quick by Bolton and Sanchez. That's what I heard, anyway. Wish I'd seen it!" He ducked Goro's punch and laughed again.

Toshi shut his locker with one precise click, not an ounce more force than required, and headed to the door. Goro followed. "Toshi? Are you gonna tell me what's wrong?"

In the hallway, Toshi finally turned to look at Goro and said, "I talked to Keene."

Goro blinked. "Why? What about?"

"He called me. He told me everything," Toshi said, gritting the words out. "How you lied about your circulation damage. You tried to hide it from him."

Goro held his hands up in protest. "Is that all? I didn't hide anything! I didn't tell him because it wasn't a problem."

Toshi glared. "Don't treat me like I'm a fool. I haven't forgotten that the person who taught me how to play baseball was right-handed."

"That was a long time ago. I wouldn't do that anymore."

"Really? That's not what Keene said. You lied to him -- to the whole team! They even had to hire someone to make sure you weren't secretly practicing."

Goro squirmed. "I was bored. You have no idea how boring it is when you can't play baseball. And that woman Sophia! She was always nagging me and making me weird food." He winced. "And getting me in trouble with Shimizu."

Toshi slammed a fist into the wall and bowed his head. "That's not the point! The point is that you lied. To your catcher. We can't have that kind of relationship. We have to trust each other or the battery won't work."

Goro considered this, then said, "But I do trust you, Toshi!"

"More than Keene? Are you saying you were Keene's pitcher for all that time and didn't trust him?"

"Okay, okay, but that was different. We'd already lost Watts! There weren't any other pitchers! I didn't want to let the team down!"

"You know what Keene told me?" Toshi's voice trembled. "He said he shouldn't give me advice on how to handle you, since he's one of our rivals. But -- this is what he said -- he was telling me because it would be a loss for baseball. If you screwed up your other arm and couldn't pitch anymore. He said that would be a shame. He said that the sport needed pitchers like you."

Goro gaped. Keene was a good catcher. Sometimes a little meddlesome, although weren't they all? Hardly the type for sentimental words, though: much more likely to deliver a verbal kick in the guts than praise.

"He said he thought, since we were childhood friends, I might have a chance to get some sense into your skull. Since nobody else has been able to. So I have to ask you, Goro," Toshi said, raising his head to meet Goro's eyes. "Can I trust you? Or are you going to keep secrets from me? I'm not going to work with any pitcher that's going to lie to me. Not even if it's you."

"Come on, Toshi. This is our dream! Going to the World Series! Why would I mess that up?"

Toshi just kept staring.

Goro squirmed, then nodded. "Yeah. You can trust me. I'll tell you."

Toshi held his glance for a moment longer. "We'll see," he said finally, before walking off.

Behind him, Goro grumbled, "Of course I trust my catchers! I don't know what kind of crap that guy is talking."

**

Joe Gibson, Jr. didn't pay much attention when Mayumura was signed to the Raiders. After establishing absolute dominance in Japan a few years ago, Mayumura crossed the ocean. He'd been recruited directly into the Seattle Seagulls' starting lineup, where he'd done well. But given Junior's single-minded obsession with Honda -- second only to Junior's obsession with his own father -- Mayumura hadn't made much of an impression. Junior remembered him from the World Cup. He was a pitcher. Junior wasn’t afraid of pitchers, not any of them. Well, maybe two. But the rest? Distractions, mosquitos to swat. They threw balls at him, and he hit them. That was all. No further thought was needed.

Mayumura, for his own part, immediately noticed the way Junior froze when Shigeno was mentioned, then pretended nonchalance. Junior didn't bring up Shigeno himself and seldom offered any opinion when others did, but his interest was transparent. Every player needed someone to dream of besting. For Mayumura, this was still Shigeno, years out of high school, long after Mayumura had made his own mark in baseball. He felt a secret bond with Junior, linked by their common rival, though neither man spoke to the other more than was necessary: pleasant chit-chat being in neither of their repetoires.

Joe Gibson himself still shared this fixation, to Junior's unabated jealousy and disgust. While father and son had battled their way to an uneasy peace, hostilities flared up easily and often.

He called Junior on Mayumura's second morning as a Raider. "Looks like things are going to get even more interesting. I think Mayumura will be the one to really challenge Honda."

Junior's finger paused above the disconnect button on his phone. "You never change, do you? You're always looking at him, thinking about him! I'm your son! Sometimes I feel like Honda isn't the only one who lost a father!" Tirade delivered, he hung up.

His father stared at the phone before releasing a tiny, tired laugh. "Neither of us have changed," he said softly.

**

Gibson wasn't the only one comparing the merits of the two prominent Japanese pitchers. Keene found Mayumura much more cooperative than Shigeno. Not a pushover. But Keene could give Mayumura opinions. He could ask for Mayumura's thoughts -- and receive them. Instead of Shigeno's bluff, hearty denials or refusals to consider alternative viewpoints, here were the seeds of a more mutual battery relationship.

Like Mayumura, Keene wasn't inclined towards idle banter or loud, hasty words, another way in which they were a good fit. Keene sensed the same ferocity to win that he’d found in Shigeno and recognized in himself. They weren't a flashy pair: no dramatics, no hysterics. They just did their jobs, well, and learned how to do them better together, to the satisfaction of their coach.

A week or two into the season, Keene made the mistake of thinking Junior was watching Mayumura warming up, instead of just having his body coincidentally angled in that direction.

"He's got some impressive pitches," Keene said.

Junior ignored him.

Keene gave him a sideways glance and added, "I think with some work, he'll give Shigeno a run for his money."

Junior tried to cover his start with an awkward, forced cough.

Keene hid his smile and leaned on the fence, looking away. "Then again, I don't know. I shouldn't say this now that I'm not a Hornet, but... There really is no telling how high Shigeno will rise. The more a batter challenges him, the better his pitches get," he added, turning to look directly at Junior.

Junior shrugged stiffly and went to go fiddle with his equipment.

**

The Raiders stormed through the season, barely relinquishing the top spot at all. Four years ago they'd won the Series, beating the Salmons; every year since, the Raiders had threatened to repeat their victory. This year was no different. The team was at a peak: no significant losses to the DL and everyone riding a momentum that soared with every win. Keene and Mayumura sharpened their techniques. Junior's batting remained the terror of most pitchers.

After a shaky start for the Hornets, they grew to be strong contenders in their division, though it was a struggle, and as the season wore on, tensions rose. The battery, at least, had settled down after their initial blowup, but around the rest of the team, Toshi's usual politeness and reserve made a starker and starker contrast to Goro's brash, unfiltered verbal explosions.

"Was he always like this?" Roy asked Toshi, in the wake of one particularly blistering rant Goro gave after they lost due to a fielding error that allowed the winning run home.

"He used to be even worse," Toshi said, lips quirked in a half-smile.

"Well, then, I have to thank you for whatever you did over the years to make him less of a dunderhead," Roy said, and then had to explain to Toshi what "dunderhead" meant.

Meanwhile, the closer they got to the division championship, the less Goro and Toshi spoke to each other. It wasn't hostility. Instead, their rapport began to transcend words, as if they really were speaking to each other only through baseball. Every battery had a set of signals, but Goro and Toshi's private language was much more extensive. Their thoughts -- what pitch for the next batter, an apology for a misjudgment, or an exhortation to keep strong -- were fluid and silent.

This wordless understanding developed beyond the diamond as well. They even managed, to the amusement of the other players, to argue with fewer words, whether it was about a game-related matter or simply where to eat dinner that night.

"Those two are spooky," Murdoch said one day, nodding his head at the pair as they left to grab some food after practice -- pizza, at Goro's request, seemed to be the plan, although no one aside from Toshi was sure. "Really good, but spooky."

**

The Raiders clinched the division title. The deciding game, against the Panthers, began with a pitchers' duel followed by a back-and-forth scrabble for the lead. Mayumura never lost his cool, but by the end he was sweating and sagging. Keene carried his share of the burden, throwing out two batters trying to steal; at bat himself, he was 4-for-4.

The game was thrilling for everyone except Junior, who appeared more interested when the announcers reported scores for other games. That didn't affect his performance, of course; his homer, early on, seemed almost perfunctory. His stoic facade broke when he heard that the Hornets were still in the running: one game more to go in their league. Mayumura and Keene noticed Junior's obvious relief.

**

In the end, neither team earned World Series rings that year. The Hornets choked and surrendered the division title to the Dallas Elephants. It was a game no one could really be proud of; Goro seemed to alternate between turning his disappointed fury on himself and on his teammates (never Toshi, though). The next day, Goro started intensive physical therapy for his shoulder. The timing was suspicious, but Toshi was still speaking to him. There was no noise about the battery splitting up. Perhaps it was coincidental.

"Next year," Goro said forcefully, "will be our turn." They were all in a bar, staring at the television screens in disbelief, watching champagne being sprayed over a mass of jubilant Dallas players. The Elephants had just won the World Series, trampling the Raiders in a shocking four-game loss. There were no obvious weak spots in the Raiders lineup to point to, no glaring errors; it had just been a series of bad judgments and bad luck, repeated: small ball, only in reverse. Moments in which their goal slipped back and back again. At the end, they were bruised and stunned, shuffling off the field in silence.

"Next year starts now," Keene said to his teammates in the locker room that night. He and Mayumura exchanged a nod.

 _Next year_ , Gibson thought. _I'll be there, Honda. Will you?_


End file.
